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Just the facts please

Gee, where to start. Certainly not with the comments posted as most of those people have no factual basis for knowing what “they know.”

You state: “The birth of the connection between illegal aliens, identity theft and the Social Security system began in 1986. That year Congress passed the Immigration Reform and Control Act (IRCA), which required workers to show a Social Security card to obtain employment.”

That is not correct. People always needed a Social Security Number for tax purposes. Aliens not authorized to work in the U.S. used to get Social Security Cards that were not valid for employment but until 1982 that notation was not on the face of the card. Note the following:

“In 1974, statistics revealing continually increasing numbers of illegal aliens working in the United States motivated SSA to distinguish SSNs issued for nonwork purposes. Although SSA’s internal records reflected the distinction, however, the SSN cards issued to both groups looked identical until SSA began to annotate nonwork cards with the restriction Not Valid for Employment in 1982.”
Singer and Dodd-Major, Identification Numbers and U.S. Government Compliance Initiatives, 2 Immigration & Nationality Law Handbook 346 (2004-05 ed.)

See also the GAO study you cited “Since 1982, when SSA began issuing cards indicating they are not valid for employment,...” Immigration Enforcement: Benefits and Limitations to Using Earnings Data to Identify Unauthorized Work at 9 http://www.gao.gov/new.items/d06814r.pdf

It was in 1982 that some aliens needed to obtain a social security number that was not issued in their real name. Many of those people work under social security numbers that were issued to people years ago who left the U.S. You could call that identify theft but I doubt if any court would agree with you as the person from whom the number was “stolen” consented to the “theft.”

The short GAO study you site (it is only 16 pages) should be read in total to get a better idea of the situation. It is not just “illegal” aliens in the suspense file. For example the Earnings Suspense file “Contains information about many U.S. citizens as well as noncitizens—the overall percentage of unauthorized workers is unknown. Immigration Enforcement: Benefits and Limitations to Using Earnings Data to Identify Unauthorized Work at 10 http://www.gao.gov/new.items/d06814r.pdf

You have numerous other gratuitous comments not supported by facts. “Illegal aliens represent cheap labor for employers” and “roadmap to employers and workers guilty of breaking labor and immigration laws” imply that all illegal alien workers are a) underpaid and b) known to the employer to be illegal. As generalizations these conclusions are false. Those who meet employers who have gotten their first Social Security “mis-match letter” know full well that most employers have no idea that a particular worker is illegal and often are not simply paying that worker a just wage but a wage far above the prevailing wage simply because the person is such a good worker and, more importantly, if that person quit the employer would have a devil of a time replacing that person because there is a labor shortage is many areas of the U.S.

We need a guest worker program now and real conservatives should be supporting such a plan.